


Play for Me

by nothingislittle



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Basically, Hand Jobs, His Last Vow Spoilers, John's Gunshot Scar, M/M, Masturbation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Resolved Sexual Tension, Scar porn, Scars, Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers, Sherlock's Gunshot Scar, Smut, i guess? idk i'm addicted to plot, i've slept six hours of the last 48 these re all the tags you're getting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 22:20:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2000073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingislittle/pseuds/nothingislittle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"John had shown up at Baker Street only one day prior, an army duffle slung over his shoulder, the expression on his face like a cracked and ruptured fault line. Sherlock stood aside, holding open the door, and let John ascend the stairs in silence, asking nothing of Mary, asking nothing at all. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play for Me

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Katie for talking through much of this with me, and to Skully for doing gunshot scar research when Google image search threatened to scare the bejeezes out of me.

The only sounds in the flat are the crackling of the fire and John’s wedding ring tapping against his glass of scotch.

_Tap._

_Tap._

_Tap._

It goes on and on, steady and incessant, like a broken faucet, and Sherlock thinks of Chinese water torture, of being held down by the boys a year above him and the tapping between his eyes, slowly and surely until he screamed from the pain, like he wants to now. He stays silent.

It’s been an hour since either of them said anything and Sherlock is certain John hasn’t taken one drink from that glass, completely unoccupied by the task at hand, just as Sherlock is with the microscope before him. He stares through the lens at water molecules, pretending the information they present is important, pressing, when all he sees is hydrogen and oxygen dancing around each other.

_Tap._

_Tap._

_Tap._

John had shown up at Baker Street only one day prior, an army duffle slung over his shoulder, the expression on his face like a cracked and ruptured fault line. Sherlock stood aside, holding open the door, and let John ascend the stairs in silence, asking nothing of Mary, asking nothing at all. Sherlock was sure he’d feel euphoric if John ever stood at his doorstep with belongings in hand, if he ever returned to 221b to stay, but Sherlock only felt himself evaporating among the ambiguity of John’s presence. This wasn’t John leaving Mary, this was … this was something else entirely, something Sherlock couldn’t deduce, couldn’t work out without asking John questions and honestly, it looked like one well-placed inquiry from Sherlock would knock him over.

So Sherlock stayed silent as John traipsed up the stairs, followed him as dumped his duffle on the landing and then shuffled into the kitchen to make tea for them both. That was nice, and though Sherlock still could make nothing of the situation, he enjoyed the earl grey as only John could brew it.

John stayed silent too, as they sat and sipped, and he stared out the window, his face as gray as the city itself. He finally spoke once Sherlock had downed the dregs of his tea and John’s had gone cold, barely touched, in his hand.

“Could I … can I stay … here … just for a bit?” John asked it of the window, or at least seemed to as his eyes were glued to the panes and remained that way.

Sherlock cleared his throat to reply but John spoke again.

“I  need some time … some time to … think.”

 _So the decision was still unmade._ Sherlock scolded himself for being disappointed, surprised. _His wife is pregnant, you unassailable git, and you keep getting in the way. He’s not going to pick you. Idiot._

He knew then John would not stay long at Baker Street and Sherlock floundered for a way to tell him how much he was wanted there, in their rooms. He coughed lightly and breathed deeply, setting down his cup and saucer.

“John, there will never be a day that you are not welcome at 221b for any length of time you wish.”

Unfocused eyes finally slid from the window over to Sherlock’s and while the rest of his face still clouded like a storm, the left side of John’s mouth raised and Sherlock suppressed a shiver. It was a gift to have John in any way after what he’d put him through, Sherlock takes that to heart every minute of his life, and when John smiles — half or otherwise — Sherlock sometimes feels he could melt on the spot. That smile. He would cross great, freezing tundras and hack through sweaty, dripping jungles to rend a smile from John.

And so for approximately the next 24 hours, Sherlock said as little as possible, given that nearly everything he could think of to say would in no way win anything but John’s stony stoicism.

_Tap._

_Tap._

_Tap._

Sherlock wants to scream but John has no time for overwrought displays of emotion when he’s like this and Sherlock is fully aware that all of this is not about him. He has no right, no place to interject his thoughts, his feelings, his wants or needs. He will not impose himself on John again.

Even so his heart is pounding, perpetually beating as if he’d just taken flights of stairs, his stomach queasy, empty and sloshing. He’s anxious, John being near is making him _nervous_ and it’s so absolutely ludicrous because it’s John. John, who was once a port in the storm, respite and safe haven, John who punched people in the face when they mistreated Sherlock, John, who checked in on Sherlock’s heart when John thought it might be broken.

_And … how are we feeling about that?_

The memory is distant and fading, so long before Sherlock leapt, left. He wonders if John felt this turmoil, this pain, this anxiety in the face of Sherlock’s own silence. If so, he’d like to apologize because this waiting for something to give with no indication of a practical timeline is nothing short of hell.

This night is so much like that one, New Year’s Eve, the silence, the cold just outside the windows, the fire crackling, lighting the room in golden tones. John with a glass of scotch in his hand, sitting silent, sentinel over Sherlock. Sherlock is the watcher now, the one who waits. _Hell_.

_Tap._

_Tap._

_Tap._

Turning back to his microscope, he removes the glass slide, populated with a useless, meaningless sample of tap water and resists the urge to break it again the wall above the sink. He thinks idly the only thing missing is the sound of his violin filling the flat and immediately the tapping stops. Sherlock never gave much weight to the validity of psychic abilities, but as John stands, heads to the desk and opens Sherlock’s violin case on his desk, he makes a note to reconsider. John looks over at him, fingers on strings, plucks the E.

Curious, Sherlock silently rises from his chair, abandoning the open box of slides on the table and crosses to John, looking him up and down. John’s hands are still on the violin and Sherlock can’t decide what he’s meant to do — to play? Should he take it? Ask him to pass it over? Sherlock doesn’t know so he waits. He can smell John from here, aftershave, scotch. John picks up the Strad by the neck and closes the distance between the two of them. His knuckles brush Sherlock’s chest where they’re wrapped around the fingerboard and it sears like fire through the thin, purple fabric of his shirt. Sherlock is breathless, confused and the knots is his stomach have tightened beyond bearing.

“What—”

“Play for me.”

It’s not a request Sherlock expected but neither is it one he can deny. Eyes on John’s, he lifts his hand and closes his fist around John’s, around the violin neck. John’s half smile appears again, and Sherlock can see the pulse point in his neck jumping rapidly, notices dilated pupils, and he can’t breathe. John slips his small hand out from beneath Sherlock’s and hands him the bow. Sherlock doesn’t move but to take it, and John slips past him, brushes deliberately against him because there’s more than enough room to get by and yet his chest drags along Sherlock’s arm the whole way. He pushes the bow into Sherlock's other hand

His brain is sputtering to a halt, all this new information. He hears John sit down in his chair, the broken spring creaking, hears the wedding ring clink against the glass again as he retrieves it, but Sherlock is frozen, back to John, instrument in hand. Lost.

“What should I —”

“Anything. Whatever you want.”

Sherlock looks over his shoulder at John, glowing under the soft light of the dying fire. The rosy light creates an illusion of youth over his lined face, and his gentle smile creates an illusion of contentedness but in his eyes … Sherlock can see depths of sadness and uncertainty, confusion and bitterness and heartbreak. He’s consumed by apologies and atonements, but no words to voice them so he plays. He picks up the violin and plays the only song he can think of to accurately convey the pain he feels, the song he composed those years ago, on New Year’s Eve.

He plays and sees that the sadness laced into the notes must reach John because his entire mouth turns down and turns into a disgusted scowl. Sherlock doesn’t know if he should stop, but as the brokenness is overtaking John’s face again and he leaps out of his chair and stomps to the front door, Sherlock breaks off.

“John, where are you—”

“Shut up!” He whirls back around, pointing at Sherlock, and he’s lost again. “Just shut up, alright?”

 _What happened? What’s wrong?_ He tries to ask these with his eyes and face, tries to stay quiet.

“Did you really think, after all that we’ve been through, I’d want you to play me the song you wrote for _her_?”

“For … who? What? Wrote for who?”

John smiles like a murder.

“ _Irene_.”

Sherlock is genuinely stunned. How could John think …? He closes his eyes. Sees it all through John’s. _Oh my god._

“Sod this. I’m going to bed. I’ll be back at Mary’s in the morning. I can’t believe I thought — nevermind. Goodnight.” John spits the last word, turns on his heel and has reached the first step before Sherlock can make his body function properly.

“John, wait!” Sherlock cries, stumbles hastily, tripping on the carpet. John doesn’t turn, but he stops, right hand on the bannister, left hand clenching, as it does.

“John I …” How to explain. Best to just say it. “John, I wrote that song about you.”

He still hasn’t turned but Sherlock is surprised to hear what sounds like laughter. Human interaction is infuriating, he decides, frowning. John turns, incredulous in the extreme, and speaks in the choppy cadence he has at his angriest.

“ _You_. Actually expect _me_. To believe _that_.” He raises his eyebrows and cocks his chin left, the picture of unconvinced.

“John, I … Irene's death. It was … difficult. For me to process.she was gone and when I was looking at what I thought was her dead body, all I could think about was you. What if something like this happened to you and I was called to ... identify your ... remains. At that point in my life, I prided myself highly on my ability to detach, but that thought had me panicked and I — I didn’t understand how to handle it.”

Sherlock’s cheeks burn. These are things he’s avoided saying for literal years and even though when he returned he’d been ready to say them, John hadn’t needed to hear them. At least Sherlock saw it that way. He had Mary, anything Sherlock could offer was moot. But now, as John stares at him, agape, Sherlock wonders if he was, maddeningly, mistaken.

“So you wrote a sad little song on your violin about me.”

He may well have slapped him. John’s tone is scathing and Sherlock wants to vomit, rapidly reminding himself that responses like these are precisely why emotion is useless and damaging, why caring is not an advantage, why detachment is vital. Sherlock tightens his jaw turns to put his violin back in it’s case, vowing never to try this again. John doesn’t want to hear it. He’ll go back to Mary, they’ll have the baby, and Sherlock will watch from the other side of the fence. He’ll keep them all safe, happy. This is his place now. The gilded clasps snap shut and Sherlock swallows against the lump in his throat.

Footsteps behind. He turns. John heads for his full glass of scotch and downs it at once, setting the tumbler down hard. His jaw is hard, steel resolve, but his eyes are somehow long, endless oceans and John is lost at sea as he walks toward Sherlock, enters his personal space, plants one foot between Sherlock’s legs, and one his left. John looks him up and down, eyes settling on the buttons of his purple shirt. For some reason, Sherlock is short of breath and his heart is pounding. He sees the flush high on John’s cheeks and deduces from his breathing that John’s heart is behaving similarly.

“John?”

“Hmm?”

“What … what are you …?”

John won’t look him in the face, just stares at his buttons, pulled tight across his chest. He raises slightly shaking hands and applies them to Sherlock’s chest, flat palms covering the puckered fabric there. Sherlock sucks in a breath at the contact, searches John’s face, observing his immense concentration and the rapid flickering of his pulse under the skin of his neck.

Slowly, John slides his fingers over and gently undoes the first button, and then the second, and on down until Sherlock is breathing so heavily John has trouble freeing the fabric on his inhalations because it’s pulled so tight. Finally the last bit is undone and John pulls it open, exposing Sherlock’s chest and then stops, hands at his sides. It feels like decades that John is looking at Sherlock and the thrill of his eyes roving over Sherlock’s bare skin is crackling through him like lightning, his heart pounding like thunder, and it’s unbearable, exquisite and excruciating at once and Sherlock tries to hold his breath but there’s no point, he’s nearly panting. He can’t make himself move, can’t make himself ask John what he’s doing, what he’s thinking, and finally, finally John moves. His eyes are fixed to a point near the center of Sherlock’s chest and his mind is so cloudy, so full of the sight of John reaching to touch him, he can’t figure out what John is fixated on, can’t even get his brain to make a haphazard deduction as to what John is thinking until the index finger of John’s left hand brushes feather soft over the gunshot scar.

_Oh._

Sherlock looks down the spot where John’s skin is touching his, at the angry, raised contours of the entry wound. It’s still red and, inexplicably, still stings slightly when prodded despite being completely healed, at least according to his doctors. John fits his palm over the the spot, the tiny hole in the center of his hand and he finally looks up.

“Does it still hurt?” His throat is dry, Sherlock can tell from the way  he swallows hard after he speaks. Sherlock feels sandpaper in his throat as well and tries to talk past it.

“S-sometimes.”

His heart is beating so fiercely, John has to feel it, has to know what he’s doing to Sherlock, but he doesn’t say, it doesn’t even show in his face as he lets his hand slide away from the scar, resting on the flat plane of Sherlock’s abdomen. His gaze falls, narrowing at Sherlock’s chest, and then he’s leaning forward, mouth open and soft, and kissing Sherlock’s skin, gently lapping and his scar.

“ _Oh god_.” Sherlock has imagined John’s mouth on him many, many times, but it never came close to this, the heat and wet where his body meets John’s, feeling the breath puffing gently from John’s nose as he mouths at his skin. Sherlock can’t look, is overwhelmed, leans his head back, groaning loud and long. His arms lift without prompting, without realizing what he’s doing, long fingers wending into short hair. John’s mouth slides up Sherlock’s chest and closes tightly over his right nipple, pulling and sucking at it until Sherlock feels it hardening and when John pulls back blows a small stream of cool air across his skin only to return there and bite down, Sherlock’s knees nearly give out. He slumps forward, forcing John to straighten and support his lanky frame. Sherlock’s forehead is resting on John’s left shoulder and all he can do is pant and attempt to stay afloat.

_How did I get here?_

Huffing hard breaths, his cock steely in his pyjama bottoms, _John Watson’s_ arms resting on his hips. John. Touching him. John’s saliva still drying on his bare chest. _How?_ Sherlock is swimming inside his own mind, overwhelmed by sensation, blood rushing from his head, he can feel it going, _whooshing_ in his ears and he vaguely registers the rapid rise and fall of John’s shoulder against his forehead. He clears his throat.

“Erm … sorry, Sherlock, I —”

“It’s fine, John. It’s fine.”

More breathing, in and out, it echos through the flat just as the tapping of John’s ring against his scotch glass. Fleetingly Sherlock thinks of that ring, how it’s still on John’s finger, and every implication he wears with it but just as quickly he places the thought under lock and key in his mind palace and blurts out the only other thing he can think.

“I want to see yours.”

“What?”

“Honestly John, don’t be so dense. It doesn’t suit.” Sherlock noses at the top of John’s shoulder, rubs back and forth over the seem of his button-up, breathing in. He has to see it. Five years he’s been trying to, barging into the bathroom, into John’s room, even once in a changing room at a department store. Observably John was never without a vest. But now. Now here was a chance, he could feel the openness radiating from John. After what John just did, he can ask for this, it’s allowable, reciprocity. He can ask.

“Let me see yours, John. Please.”

John’s breathing picks up even harder and Sherlock pulls back to read his face. His eyes are wide, panicked but Sherlock can also see excitement, anticipation.

“I don’t normally …”

“What?”

“I don’t often show … my scar … to … anyone.”

“Anyone? So … no one has—”

“Not no one, Sherlock, just …” John puts his hand to his forehead, thumb on the left, two fingers on the right. Classic exasperated John, Sherlock thinks vaguely, fondness threatening to consume.

“It’s a very private thing. It’s my … it’s _me_ , alright?” John drops his hand, and Sherlock looks at him, stares at his eyes and he looks almost pained, thinking he was wrong, he got it wrong, this wasn’t allowable, this isn't something he could ask of John, especially not after what Sherlock as already forced him to endure. Barriers, there are all these barriers between the two of them, there always have been, caution, fear, and now there are a host of other walls. Resentment. Grief. Anger. John Watson’s barely contained rage is evident in every ridge of his tightly wound body, even an idiot could detect that. He’s tight like that now, rigid and taut, clenching and unclenching his left hand, looking directly through Sherlock, he thinks. _How did I ever call this man an idiot?_

The moment is breaking, what they've shared here is ending, Sherlock can feel it, feel that it’s his fault, just as everything else that’s deteriorated between them. He’s about to speak, apologize, move away from John before awkwardness and contempt can leech into the memory of John’s mouth and hands roaming his body. But unexpectedly, John’s gaze flickers from Sherlock’s, down to his chest again, staring at his scar, unblinking. Sherlock feels it, that he shouldn't move. John looks back up into Sherlock’s eyes, nods once, quick and hard, and starts to unbutton his shirt.

Sherlock was certain, seconds ago, that it was over, that he would move on from tonight having completely lost anything that could have been, but now, now John’s buttons are all undone and as his outer shirt has fallen on the ground and his calloused fingers are pulling at the hem of his vest and _oh._  It’s over his head and gone and John’s compact and powerful frame is finally revealed entirely to Sherlock, smoothly muscled and tan, blonde hair cropping up over his thick chest and then, his scar. It seems small at first, so Sherlock steps forward to inspect it more closely. John has closed his eyes again, fists clenched, radiating discomfit, but he doesn’t tell Sherlock to stop and he doesn’t flinch and Sherlock can’t resist cataloging the raw data of John Watson when it’s right in front of him.

The scar is smallish and oddly pink next to the rest of his golden skin but when Sherlock circles around to look at John’s back he sees the larger extraction point, the concave skin, lined and bumpy, surprisingly circular. Sherlock doesn’t even know the details of John’s shooting, never had the courage to ask and John never disclosed and although his mind is flooded with deductions about point of entry, hours of surgery, healing times, the only thing Sherlock is truly interested in is the way the light from the fire plays off of the topography of John’s skin, the rise and fall of the scar tissue, the constellation and the pattern, the story written on John of his bravery, his valor, his survival.

His face in inches from the scar and he unthinkingly reaches out to lightly trace its various lines and John flinches away slightly on contact.

“I’m—”

“It’s okay, sorry.”

“Can I …?”

A beat.

“Yes. Of course. Go ahead.”

Pale fingers against skin glowing like the sun. Sherlock traces every piece of the scar from the center out, memorizing the differences, committing it all to his memory, making a special place for it even among all the other memories of John he couldn’t, could never, delete. John’s labored breathing is becoming apparent and Sherlock is suddenly overwhelmed with the worry that he may be hurting him and stops, lifting his hand and coming back around to face John. His shoulders and fists are still drawn tight but his  eyes are open and yearning, his chest rising and falling, and Sherlock’s heart aches with wanting to put his mouth on John.

He cannot stop himself when he steps into him and, bending down, runs his nose over and up his shoulder to John’s neck, breathing deeply, inhaling the scent of John’s skin, appalled by his own boldness and unable to pull away. When he puts his lips to the curve of between his neck and shoulder, closed and dry, but soft, and kisses him there gently, John rolls his head to better expose his neck to Sherlock and his shoulders sag, relaxed and open and Sherlock does not miss the significance of the display of receptiveness, however unexpected it is.

Still feeling bold, Sherlock reaches his hands up to rest on John’s chest while opening his mouth, running his tongue up the gorgeous tendons in John’s neck, and around to his throat, grazing his teeth across John’s Adam’s apple there.

He can feel John swallow thickly then and when his hands come up to hold Sherlock’s face between them and he notes the warmed metal of the wedding ring on his cheek he feels a bit sick, even as John’s erection presses up against his thigh and he wants it, he wants it all so desperately, but it’s not right, it’s not John … this isn’t the kind of thing John would do, it’s so rash. Sherlock has to make him see sense because he won’t, he can’t be one of John Watson’s regrets. Not again. Not like this.

“John.” Sherlock tries to talk between sloppily wet kisses on Jonh’s neck and shoulders and chest. “John, please.”

“What ?”

“Tell me to stop.”

It’s silent in the flat except for the wet noises Sherlock’s mouth makes against John’s skin.

“Why?” John breathes, slipping his fingers into Sherlock’s hair and wending the curls into his fists.

“Ah, because. Because it’s not … you’re going to regret this, John.”

“Do you think so?”

“Tell me to stop, you’ve got to tell me,” Sherlock groans and bites down on the delicate skin beneath John’s jaw, frustrated and wanting and needing. “Because I can’t … I can’t do it on my own.”

Sherlock, whimpering quietly, lifts his head to mouth at John’s jaw line because it can’t be helped. Sherlock whines. He can’t take this. He is not equipped for this want, this intensity, this is all supposed to be suppressed and hidden and it’s tearing him to pieces and it either has to end or continue and it _can’t_ continue so it has to end. _Please_.

“Why won’t you say it?”

John pulls him back by his hair and looks in his eyes, and John’s are pleading just as Sherlock feels himself pleading.

“Because I can’t.”

Sherlock’s heart drops out to the floor with want and then John is kissing him. And it’s like a dam breaking.

Once their lips are together, a ferocity both of them have clearly held painstakingly at bay breaks free and John kisses him so intensely it hurts. Teeth scrape together, lips are bitten, a growl escapes Sherlock’s throat into John’s mouth when John pulls tightly at the black hair in his hands. Sherlock doesn’t care, he doesn’t care about anything but where John is touching him, about anything but John pulling him roughly over to the couch and pushing him down and kneeling between his legs, slotting their hips together. He drags his hips back and forth slowly and his cock ruts against Sherlock’s through pants and jeans and cotton pyjama bottoms and it’s agony, it’s glorious agony with John’s mouth biting and gnawing at his collar bone. Sherlock’s fingers scrabble over the leather on either side of his body, desperate to grab something.

“Please, oh god, _John_ , please!” Sherlock begs, shouts and begs and doesn’t care what he gets, because he’ll take anything.

John raises himself above Sherlock’s body, hands on either side of his head, to look down into his eyes. His hips are still rolling forward and back and Sherlock is keening quietly, pushing back against him clumsily.

“Are you sure?” John asks, is skeptical.

“Yes,” Sherlock pants.

“I still have no idea what I’m going to do.”

Sherlock nods, tries to stop thrashing, “Yes, I know.”

“And you want this anyway?” John looks pained and flushed, and he apparently can’t stop himself either without a word from Sherlock because he continues to slowly torture them both, frotting lazily through their clothing, dropping his head to kiss Sherlock softly. Anything. Sherlock will take anything.

“Always, John. I’ve, ahh, always wanted this. Even before I realized what it was.”

John lifts his head, stills his hips, taking Sherlock in with a furrowed brow. He’s so beautiful, it hurts, Sherlock thinks, every line in his face, the angle of his jaw, his eyelashes sparkling in the firelight. He could cry from the beauty of it all, the blush high and his brow and the sheen of sweat on his upper lip and the sensation of his heart pounding against Sherlock’s chest, and the pain. Even the pain in John’s eyes is beautiful.

“What if this is all you get, what if it’s all I can give you?”

The room is silent and Sherlock looks up fiercely into John’s eyes.

“Then I’ll take it.”

John examines him a moment more, apparently notes the sincerity in his face and slides off of Sherlock to nestle between him and the back of the sofa, pulling Sherlock’s left leg in between his own and up against his cock. Sherlock hisses at the contact and pushes against him best he can at that angle while John dips his hand into Sherlock’s bottoms and works them over his waist and hips, tugging them from under his arse and bunching them at down around Sherlock’s upper thighs.

His cock is so hard it’s bent up toward his abdomen and Sherlock’s heart is careening out of control, the beat feels irregular, when John’s eyes stare into his at the same time he wraps his hand around the tip of his erection. He holds still there and Sherlock holds his breath, straining not to push up into John’s fist, waiting to see what he aims to do, but it’s impossible and Sherlock whimpers another please and then John dips his head to apply his mouth to the same spot it first touched him, over his scar, just left of center in his chest and he gently worries it with his tongue while dragging his hand down Sherlock’s length.

He hits his head on the armrest and swears loudly because it’s impossible, impossible that it feels this good but also perfect because how else would it feel to have John’s hand, firmly and steadily pumping his cock, dragging his thumb over the tip on the up stroke, pushing through the steadily dripping through pre-come.

When John’s hips begin to rut his cock against Sherlock’s leg, matching the rhythm of his hand, Sherlock is sure he is seconds from coming but just then, John pulls his hand away to run it softly over Sherlock’s balls, cupping gently, and Sherlock moans in frustration. John has moved his mouth over to his left nipple and alternately laps at it and rubs his nose over the hard tip. He returns his hand to Sherlock’s cock after a few moments and starts pulling at him again, not slowly, but also not quickly. But as soon as Sherlock’s hips start to try and rock into his fist erratically, John pulls his hand away again, dipping between Sherlock’s legs to pet gently at the skin above his hole. No poking, no prodding, just soft, insistent strokes.

Sherlock shoves his right fist into his mouth to keep from shouting. His face is radiating heat, sweating slightly, and the temperature in the flat must have risen at least twenty degrees. Sherlock tries to get his breath back but it’s no use, he’s more breathless than after having chased a cab through London skips and he looks down at John, peeking up from where he’s leaving soft love bites that make Sherlock yelp quietly, and he has the tiniest smirk on his face.

“You’re … a bloody … menace.” Sherlock huffs between breaths. John smiles as if to say _I know_ but he only says _shhh_ , pushing up to kiss Sherlock’s mouth, returning his hand to Sherlock’s straining prick, pumping it harder, more purposefully this time and Sherlock tries to kiss him back but soon his can only puff big breaths of air out of his mouth and murmur nonsense syllables into John’s cheek because he’s close, he’s so close.

And then John bites him, hard, right next to his scar, and it hurts, and it’s perfect, and Sherlock has to gnaw on his fingers to keep from calling out _I love you, I love you, I love you_ , when he’s coming, spilling onto John’s fist, and his own stomach and pumping his hips as he does, already shaking, grunting past the digits in his mouth and all he can think is John.

John strokes him through it, kissing softly at his neck, until Sherlock’s hips still and apparently his own need becomes too much to bear because in a fit of movement, he undoes the buckle of his jeans and frees his own cock and Sherlock can only stare at him while John coats his fist in even more of Sherlock’s come and slicks it over his own cock, rapidly pulling at himself, over and over and before Sherlock can even reach forward to touch him, John is coming over Sherlock’s stomach and softening cock and the sight of his face, wild with abandon, and the sound of Sherlock’s name on his lips is enough to wash away the regret that Sherlock didn’t get to finish John himself.

Sherlock is light headed and he rests against the top of John’s, pressing his lips into shortly cropped, ash blonde hair. He doesn’t feel happy or content, as he expected when he used to imagine this moment and he doesn’t know why, there’s not enough blood in his brain to deduce it and he tries to settle in and enjoy these moment where John is lying beside him, breathing heavily, smelling fresh and warm but then John shifts and leans back to look at Sherlock and his eyes — the hollowness there. And then Sherlock remembers what John said, only minutes ago, _I still still have no idea what I’m going to do._

And he still doesn’t.

It hurts Sherlock somewhere, deep, that things aren’t clear, even now, even after all of this, Sherlock is not John’s clear choice and what could be worse than this, feeling like a very far second to the love of your life. He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes iron to keep tears out of his eyes.

John’s breathing has slowed. He shifts a little and the mess they’re covered in oozes and he stops.

“Hm. Could use a shower, I ‘spose.”

He speaks without opening his mouth all the way, without making eye contact, as if he’s trying to diminish the existence of this situation, as if by speaking quietly and exiting quickly, it will somehow have happened less. Frankly it’s cowardly and unlike John and it throws Sherlock off kilter. John is not a coward. Then again, before this evening, Sherlock would have also said John is not a cheater, yet here is he is, indelicately wiping ejaculate from his wedding ring clad left hand onto the leg of his trousers. _You did this to him. You made him act like someone he’s not._ Sherlock hates it, hates himself, hates everything then. But he’s so far out of his depth — as always, where John is concerned — he stays silent, waits for John’s next move, to take his cue from him.

“Do you wanna … erm …” John looks at him from the side of his eye, something almost hopeful flickers there but then he, looks down at their messy torsos and Sherlock sees guilt overcome his entire body, hope draining from his face. “You can shower first. I don’t mind.”

Sherlock nods, his entire body tense, and extricates himself from the sofa, trying not to drip on the rug. In the bathroom, behind a closed door, Sherlock strips quickly and turns only the cold tap on in the shower, sitting down in the tub and letting the icy water cascade over his still-fevered face. The cold hurts enough, and the pressure is hard enough, he tells himself he doesn’t even notice the warm tears dripping down his cheeks.

After standing and cleaning himself deftly, he puts his head directly under the freezing stream for a few minutes, his curly hair flattened by the force of it, rivulets running over his face, tries to breathe and pull himself together. Loudly, he exits through the door directly to his room to make it clear to John the bathroom is free and by the time Sherlock is redressed in fresh pyjamas and a dressing gown, he hears the water running again. He towels his hair carelessly, not bothering with any of his usual product, and as he goes through these familiar motions of drying and dressing he doesn’t his best to tick through all the emotions he allowed himself to be carried away by tonight and shut them out as best he can — but his body betrays him and his hands shake.

Back in the sitting room, Sherlock uses the towel he dried his hair with to wipe off the sofa, although it doesn’t seem like it particularly needs it, and then goes to pick up his violin which is still sitting out on the desk. Footsteps behind. John, done with his washing, wearing his good shoes, so not ready for bed then.

“Sherlock. I …”

He looks over his shoulder. John’s face holds a distinct apology but he can’t seem to get it out. Sherlock only watches. He’s not sorry. He doesn’t want John to be either.

“I’m, er, going to go call Mary.

Sherlock turns back around, tucks the strad under his chin.

“And tell her what, exactly?”

“I don’t know.”

Neither of them move for a very long time. Sherlock has so many things he could say, wants to say: _don’t go, tell her you’re leaving her, stay with me, I love you_ but not one of them seems like it’s his place. He nods, brings the bow up, and for the second time that night, begins to play a melancholy song that’s actually about something entirely different than suspected by those listening to it. John’s footsteps ascending the stairs pause as the dulcet tones of John and Mary’s wedding waltz drift after him.

Sherlock leans into the notes, drawing them out, long, bitter sweet. He plays it until his arms are numb.

He tells himself his heart is the same.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I can often be found at teapotsubtext.tumblr.com.


End file.
